Die Journalistin und Autorin Deborah Steinborn, portraitiert am 03.09.2012 in Hamburg.
By Trish Anderton
As an American journalist living in Hamburg, Germany, Deborah Steinborn covers economics, politics and society. She has interviewed heads of state from Europe to Asia and heads of corporations from Starbucks to Berkshire Hathaway. A Knight-Bagehot fellow in business journalism at Columbia University from 2001 to 2002, she has received a German Marshall Fund grant and a Dow Jones & Co. Award for Excellence in Journalism. Steinborn’s work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, Die Zeit, Financial Times, The Christian Science Monitor, Businessweek, and other outlets. She is author of a book on women in the global economy.
Hometown: Queens, New York (just down the road from Donald Trump’s childhood home).
Education: BA from Binghamton University, Masters degrees in Journalism and International Affairs from Columbia University.
Languages: English and German.
First job in journalism: Production assistant for the public radio and television broadcaster Deutsche Welle in Cologne, Germany. I was hooked on journalism my very first day there.
Countries reported from: Germany, the U.K., Iceland and pretty much all the continental European countries, Cambodia, Thailand, Singapore, South Africa…and of course the U.S.
Year you joined the OPC: 2001.
What drew you to business reporting? I minored in business and economics in college. At the time, I thought it was a little boring. But one of my first assignments as a reporter was to cover Polish car theft rings in Germany. I saw how it all fit together – economics, politics, the lives of ordinary people. A car thief told me all the jobs in his town had dried up after the Berlin Wall fell. The only hospital in that town had shut down as a result and no one could get proper medical care. So he and a group of friends in town, including a policeman, had set up this “business” of used, stolen cars in order to revive their town.
Major challenge as a journalist: Getting billionaires to talk. One of my regular freelance gigs is for the annual Forbes Billionaires List. I’ve been by turns ignored, yelled at, bullied and threatened.
Best journalism advice received: Don’t follow the pack (from a wise old professor at Columbia University).
Worst experience as a journalist: It’s a toss-up between being shot at in the Cambodian countryside and a particularly grueling interview with a German billionaire.
When traveling, you like to… talk to locals, chat with people on the street. Go for a walk or a run to explore the neighborhood. Shop at a supermarket and talk to the deli counter folks.
Journalism heroes: Martha Gellhorn. Edward R. Murrow. I love to read Jane Kramer in The New Yorker.
Advice for journalists who want to work overseas: Pick a place you like. Do your research before moving. And beware: you might wind up staying longer than expected.
Most over-the-top assignment: Probably the weirdest reporting trip I ever took was to Iceland shortly after the global financial crisis of 2008. It’s such a small country that everyone knows everyone else. A stranger even stopped me on the street one day, asked me if I was Deborah, then started gossiping about other people I was trying to track down. One of them was in jail, she told me, just across the street. She offered to take me there for a visit.
Twitter handle: @deborahsteinbor
Want to add to the OPC’s collection of Q&As with members? Please contact patricia@opcofamerica.org.